The news from the Yankee’s camp continues to be about health, as much as baseball. Joba is out of the hospital, and Girardi is “optimistic” that he will pitch for NY this season (read: September). I’m not so sure. A-Rod was hit by a pitch, but is expected to play Tuesday. Swisher is still out (they started Nunez in right field). Pineda pitched 5 solid innings, but conspicuously absent from the reports is any indication of his velocity (perhaps the Tigers don’t have a radar gun?). Pettitte pitched batting practice. In baseball, Jeter had 2 of the Yankees’ 5 hits in a 1-1, 10-inning tie with Detroit.
More fun was that the A’s played the Hanshin Tigers in a run-up to Wednesday’s season opener in Japan. The Tigers won 12-6. I think this game just finished (no result yet on mlb.com) given the time difference; espn has no box score, so I don’t know how seriously Oakland took it, but (like losing to a college squad) the teams rarely lose to the AAA level Japanese teams – in the past, a solid ML team (which Oakland is not, really) competes fairly evenly with an all-star Japanese squad, but easily defeats a single team.
I hope to work on the remaining 3 divisions this week, but don’t promise to get them done before the official start of the season. I DO expect to have done the division of each team before it plays its first game (easier claim, because the season opens with Seattle and Oakland, and I have already done the AL West).
Baseball is nearly here!